


Coming Home

by mightierthanthecanon



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, angry!Daryl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2017-12-31 12:39:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1031797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightierthanthecanon/pseuds/mightierthanthecanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Carol raised her eyes hesitantly, taking in the cigarette in his hand, the tenseness in his shoulders, and the hard set of his mouth. Daryl knew. Of course he knew."</p><p>Carol doesn't allow herself to miss Daryl, or to hope that he'll return for her,  but when he does, they both have to face the consequences of her actions. How will they get through it? And what will become of their relationship in the wake of these heightened emotions?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I just really needed some more angry Daryl after that episode. And Norman Reedus just...pushed all my buttons last night. So. Here this is. It'll be longer, but I had to put down what I was thinking. So---it's a preview?

It had been roughly 48 hours since Rick abandoned her in the woods, she thought to herself, jerking her knife out of the a walker’s head. Maybe more, maybe less. It was hard for Carol to tell without her watch. Without her daily story time with the children, or her evening meals with Daryl, or her talks with Lizzie, even through the window of the isolation room, time flowed differently here by herself. But she was fine.

Carol stuck the knife into the dirt to clean it, wiping it off onto her shin. She was _strong_. And she wouldn’t miss them. Despite the unfortunate loss of the car she and Rick had stolen, Carol would survive on her own. The three walkers she’d just killed were proof of it.

All of a sudden, Carol heard a rustling behind her. She turned around quietly, holding her knife in front of her. “Hello?” Carol called. Maybe she’d missed one.

Daryl Dixon stepped out of the trees. 

No. That wasn’t possible.

"It’s me."

Carol raised her eyes hesitantly, taking in the cigarette in his hand, the tenseness in his shoulders, and the hard set of his mouth. He knew. Of course he knew.

She swallowed.

"Hello Daryl."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been sick and busy and between jobs and everything you can think of. But...here this is.

He’d come back for her. Of course he had.

Carol had known he was coming, could feel the truth of it in her bones even though she wanted it too badly to actually hope. Now that he was here, Carol felt as though she were in the calm of a storm, not knowing whether it was truly over, or if she were merely in the eye, waiting.

Daryl hadn’t moved from where he’d come out of the trees and Carol wondered when she’d ever seen him this quiet before. Broken Daryl, she understood, lashing-out Daryl, she could handle. But this…unnaturally tense silence? This stillness? Carol didn’t know what to do.

Well. She’d fix it. Carol was good at that.

She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could even formulate a thought, Daryl interrupted her.

“What did you do?” he grit out though clenched teeth.

Carol took a deep breath, expecting the familiar pit of guilt to form in her stomach, but nothing came. Perhaps 2 full days of questioning herself, reliving the moment and wondering—always wondering—what might have happened, had freed her from anyone’s guilt but her own.

“You know what I did. Rick told you.” Carol looked up at him calmly. “What do you want me to say, Daryl?” She hadn’t backed down from Rick, and she wouldn’t back down from Daryl, no matter how much she hated seeing doubt in his eyes.

Rick was right. She wasn’t that scared little girl anymore.

“What the hell’d you do?” Daryl asked again. He stalked around the tiny clearing, half checking for walkers, but mostly keeping an eye on Carol. “Hell, Rick’s running around like a chicken that ain’t got no head, and the council—”he laughed bitterly, shaking his head and taking a drag from the cigarette.

_What about the council?_ She wanted to ask. _Do they know about me? Am I exiled yet?_

“What about the council, Daryl?” Carol asked. She managed to keep her voice calm, not that it mattered. Daryl knew better. He knew her better than anyone else at the prison.

Daryl scoffed. “Why you askin' me for, anyway?”

Carol just looked at him.

“I don’t know, okay?” he answered, indignant. “I left as soon as I got Rick to tell me where you were. Damn near left before that.”

Carol’s mouth dropped open. She had spent so long feeling weak and worthless after Rick abandoned her…and now...Carol was fairly sure Daryl had left the council _in the middle of a damn council meeting_ to come back for her. Her group hated her and Rick had left her to die, but she still had Daryl. He had never let her down.

Carol reached out for that one bit of joy, that one bright light in the middle of these dark days, and held on to it like a lifeline.

“I was doing fine out here, you know,” she said, wanting Daryl, _especially Daryl_ , to know that she could do it, that she was strong.

He looked back at Carol, squinting slightly through a cloud of cigarette smoke.

“Mhmm” Daryl nodded, ducking his head to avoid her eyes. “Yeah, I know.”

And there it was—that voice that she only heard him use with her, scratchy and somehow soft at the same time. Of all the things that Carol had missed about the prison, this was the one she wouldn’t admit, even to herself. She couldn’t help it—the corners of her mouth lifted. Daryl glanced back, and for a second, it seemed like he was going to stride over to her, take the forgotten knife out of Carol’s hands and…she didn’t know. Carol had no idea.

She looked down at the knife, cleaning a spot near the blade that she’d missed.

The two days she’d spent alone had been hard, not least of all because they felt like triple that many. Even though she didn’t consciously miss Daryl, or dream of him, or think of him, her subconscious had no such qualms. Having him so close to her now was messing with her emotions.

She’d been alone, and nervous and _(not scared, never scared)_ constantly on edge, barely able to sleep for more than an hour or two at a time, and now that Daryl was here, every bone in her body wanted to run to him so that he could wrap his arms around her and she could sleep in his arms for a week. Possibly two. She raised her eyes to Daryl and he was staring at her. Whatever strange thing she was sensing, he was feeling it too. It was right there. It had been there all along. All she had to do was figure out what it was. If only she could…

“Goddammit!” Daryl exclaimed out of nowhere. He threw the butt of his burned off cigarette aside, then sucked on his burnt fingers. “Stupid fucking worthless piece of shit fucking cigarette! Who the fuck smokes menthols anyway?” Daryl whirled around, suddenly very close to Carol again. “What did you do?” he demanded.

“I killed Karen, and David,” Carol answered plainly. As she started to speak, Daryl moved closer and closer to Carol, as if he would stem the flow of words coming from her mouth through the pure weight of his presence alone. That wasn’t going to happen.

“I dragged their bodies out behind the prison and then I burned them.”

Daryl stared her down, steely eyed, and Carol held his gaze. Daryl bit at his lip in consternation.

“Why?”

“You know why,” Carol choked, all of the tension from the past few days catching up with her. This whole world was against them, all of them, what with mindless walkers, power crazed men like the governor and now this flu. This damned freaking head cold. At least this was something she could fix. This was something that she could finally control.

Carol squeezed her eyes against the pinprick of tears that she hadn’t felt in some time. She had been wrong. Even this stupid head cold had been beyond her control. She let out a slow breath, willing the emotion back down where it belonged.

“You know why,” she repeated. Carol inhaled experimentally, but her breath hitched before she could stop it and she brought her hand to her chest in an effort to calm her breathing.

Daryl’s hand was halfway to her own when he turned away from her angrily, flinging his crossbow to the ground.

“Dammit Carol!” he shouted, more frustrated than anything. “You can’t just—” he broke off fruitlessly.

Carol knew what he wanted to say. _You can’t just choose what’s best for people. You can’t just make decisions by yourself_. _You can’t just kill people like that._ But he couldn’t say it. The world had changed. And doing all of that? That was just called surviving.

Carol knelt and picked up Daryl’s crossbow from where it had fallen, brushing off the dirt. She notched the arrow that had slipped out of place and gave the bow back to Daryl, standing up to settle it gently on his shoulder.

Daryl stood stock still, allowing Carol to take as much time as she needed to adjust the bow properly. Carol didn’t want to move. Her fingers hovered over Daryl’s shoulder, not wanting to drop, but not sure if she could touch him now. Neither of them moved, both unsure of what to do and both unwilling to break the moment.

Carol breathed in slowly, letting whatever was between them grow and heat, until she couldn’t be sure if she was breathing anymore.

Daryl avoided looking at Carol until he couldn’t anymore, then turned slightly, gaze flickering between her eyes and her lips. His body rocked towards hers, so subtly that she wouldn’t have been able to notice it at any other time, at any other moment other than this one, when they were so in tune with each other, breathing the same air and sharing the same space, that it seemed they shared a heartbeat, and she could feel it beating in both their chests.

Suddenly, Daryl took her hand in his, more gently than she’d ever see him, and squeezed it once.

“Come on,” he said suddenly. “Sun’s setting. We gotta find someplace to crash.”

Carol’s eyes locked onto his. “You and me?” she asked softly.

“Well, yeah,” Daryl said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “You and me.”

Perhaps it was.


End file.
